The Man who lived in a Wheelbarrow

By Troy Morash

 

Once, in a time not too long ago and in a land not too far away, there lived a man in a wheelbarrow because he was too fat to move on his own. He hired many servants to haul him wherever he wished to go. But he never liked being asked why he wished to go where he wished to go. But no one cared to know. But the man in the wheelbarrow thought that everyone cared. He thought that living in a wheelbarrow made him interesting and beautiful to all the girls. However the main duty of his servants was to feed him. They always had to have food ready to pour into his mouth. 'I must save my energy for later,' he would always say.

One day the man demanded, 'Take me to a tree and put me in the highest branch.' His servants, who by now fed up with thier jobs and demanding a pay raise, knew that that wouldn't be easy and so they asked why.

'Because it is meant to be,' the man in the wheelbarrow snapped back at them.

So the servants put him in the highest branch of the tree. From there he could see all the people passing by on the road below him. He then told his servants to hide. When a young couple walked by, who were deeply in love, the fat man said, 'I'm a bird in the sky, you people look so small and worthless.'

The young couple on the road thought it was a just a silly bird cackling at them, so they laughed and said, 'Ha, what does a bird know! We are larger than any silly bird.'

The fat man became angry and dropped out of the tree and landed on the young man. This scared them, not to mention breaking both of the young man's legs. His lover picked him up and off they ran, for they thought that giant birds were attacking them. They ran straight into town yelling and screaming. They tried to warn everyone about the giant killer birds, but no one believed them. Most of the people knew that they were in love and so just thought them mad.

Meanwhile the man yelled to his servants to put him back into the wheelbarrow and take him to be fed. 'I'm a very funny man and am too good to do anything silly like walking. Now hurry and lift all that food into my mouth before I starve to death. What would you all do then?'

The next day the fat man in the wheelbarrow wanted to go and see a play but the servants could not cart him there because he was too heavy. So the man hired more servants and beat the old ones until he was at the play. When most of the audience saw him they just got up and walked out. The fat man told his servants, 'See! They know that they aren't good enough to be here and watch this play with me. They aren't as stupid as they look.'

But this wasn't the case. The truth was that the people couldn't bear to be in the same room as the man in the wheelbarrow. He was always playing silly tricks. He always ruined the play for everyone else. Sometimes he would order his servants to cart him onto the stage so he could change the whole play just to suit him. But this always made the play awful and it never ended with a happy ending. The man told his servants to laugh and so it just sounded as if everyone liked the fat man's changes. He was so clinical that he truly thought that everyone loved him. Then the servants took him to bath, then to bed, then to the barber, and then to feed. He never lifted a finger.

After a hefty piece of time the fat man told his servants to dig a deep hole by the side of the road and put him into it. But that seemed like an awful lot of work and so the servants asked why.

'Can't you see? Because it is meant to be. I will pretend to be a poisonous snake and scare away all the people from the side of the road. When they realize that it was a joke, they will laugh and invite me to their house. I will refuse of course but that is not the point.'

'Or maybe they will beat you,' his servants suggested.

The fat man laughed at such a thought. 'Who? Gentle old me? Now hurry and dig before I have to start beating you all again.'

'Pay us first,' the servants said since they thought this wasn't going to end up very well. The fat man paid them and they dug the hole and dumped him into it. The fat man waited for a bit, giggling the whole time. Finally another young couple deeply in love came walking by. The fat man hissed like a snake and said, 'I am a deadly snake and will kill everything that walks on this road because this is my road.'

The couple was so scared that they ran off to the town in order to warn everyone of the danger. This time the town believed the young love birds. They gathered in the main square and formed an army to go and kill the deadly snake. They took clubs with nails, spears, swords, heavy rocks and fire to later burn the snake bits. They crept quietly up to the hole and threw many rocks into it and then the whole army jumped into the hole and started chopping the deadly snake into a million pieces. After that they put the bits into a pile and burned the whole lot. Not far off was the fat man's wheelbarrow.

'He must have been eaten by the deadly snake,' they said to themselves.

For the first time the town was happy. Everything was better except for the high unemployment as all the fat man's servants were without work. But no one really cared that much. They all sang songs. The whole town was drunk on fruit juice for days and plays reached such an unheard of level of excellence; and so that's how opera was invented.

© 2002 Troy Morash. All Rights Reserved.